I think the point is John, the hipsters aren’t being far out.
They’re following each other in tighter and tighter concentric circles until they inevitably disappear out of sight.
What (particularly) John Webster was doing was the opposite.
Looking at mass market media, just not from right here, right now.
His ‘Humphries’ campaign came from WW2 propaganda.
His Honey Monster came from Sesame Street.
John Smiths came from Andy Capp.
Tic Tac came from a US comic strip ‘Terry and the Pirates’.
Hofmeister came from the Fonz in Happy Days.
Cresta came from Jules Feiffer cartoons, his reaction from Easy Rider.
Ron Collins won an award for Escalade, which he got from Boticelli’s ‘Venus Arising From The Sea’.
Paul Arden won an award for a BA commercial, which came from a 1920s ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ animation.
Point is, all of them were looking where everyone else wasn’t.

Brings to mind part of a documentary I watched on a certain Mr Jobs. In it, one of his peers nailed the idea of innovation perfectly. It’s quite simply a matter of ‘joining the dots’ of things/ideas that are already out there. The geniuses out there just have the knack of seeing more dots. And giving the rest of us a bigger picture.